02-16-2007, 03:49 AM
[quote IronMac]Are you sure? i went to ComputeTrace's website and it sounds like it's just a piece of client software?
Yes. What you are seeing (that you can just outright purchase) is the regular, client software that only resides on the hard drive - just like any other 'lojack'-type software.
On Dell laptops, and this has been shipping for a year-and-a-half now, nearly...is that within the BIOS...there is a hidden agent for CompuTrace, that is not yet activated. In the BIOS, you have a couple of options, and you only get one chance to pick (if you choose anything at all). You can leave it entirely alone (never toggle any setting to it). You can enable the agent (but can never deactivate it) - and basically have to agree that any transmission sent to/from that computer could possibly be monitored by Absolute. Or the last option is disabling it altogether - which means you can never again activate it on that machine.
Most people just leave it as-is...never activating it, nor permenately disabling it. Once you do activate it though, it immediately does not work. You do have to purchase the software to install, and then that works like it would on any computer, but the extra step that it does is also 'really' activate the BIOS agent to communicate. If the hard drive is erased, the BIOS agent is still activated because it is basically at hardware level.
Yes. What you are seeing (that you can just outright purchase) is the regular, client software that only resides on the hard drive - just like any other 'lojack'-type software.
On Dell laptops, and this has been shipping for a year-and-a-half now, nearly...is that within the BIOS...there is a hidden agent for CompuTrace, that is not yet activated. In the BIOS, you have a couple of options, and you only get one chance to pick (if you choose anything at all). You can leave it entirely alone (never toggle any setting to it). You can enable the agent (but can never deactivate it) - and basically have to agree that any transmission sent to/from that computer could possibly be monitored by Absolute. Or the last option is disabling it altogether - which means you can never again activate it on that machine.
Most people just leave it as-is...never activating it, nor permenately disabling it. Once you do activate it though, it immediately does not work. You do have to purchase the software to install, and then that works like it would on any computer, but the extra step that it does is also 'really' activate the BIOS agent to communicate. If the hard drive is erased, the BIOS agent is still activated because it is basically at hardware level.